I have wanted to try Novemberís dessert dough recipe at Reply 26 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,791.msg34074.html#msg34074 for awhile. I mixed the dough using the same amounts of ingredients that Novembers gave, but substituted light brown sugar for the dark brown sugar. The dough felt too dry after I mixed all the ingredients together so I added a little more water. The dough still felt somewhat dry, but I decided to just let it go and see what would happen. The dessert dough was mixed Sunday.

When I went to open the dough ball today, it still felt dry, but opened okay. I decided to par-bake the skin after orange marmalade was spread on the dough. The dough rose well. It then was taken out of the oven and strawberries and blueberries were used as dressing and a whole lemon was squeezed over the top of the blueberries and strawberries. Then some granulated sugar was added on top of the dressing. The pie was then put back into the oven to finish baking. A special kind of topping was then added that Randy got from another food vendor. It is used on top of strawberries pies at a bakery.

The dessert pizza turned out very well. The taste of the crust was very good and it went well with the other dressings. I never tasted this kind of pizza crust before.

I donít know if a little more water would have made the crust a little more airy or not.

I would also like to try Novemberís recipe for another dessert pizza for next week, but am not sure on whether I should add some more water or not. Maybe even using a little more evaporated milk might do, but I really donít know. With using the evaporated milk, cider vinegar and brown sugar I am not sure how to calculate really what the hydration was used. I would like a little softer dough. Novemberís dessert dough was very good in taste and sure went together well for a dessert pizza, but I always like an airier crust for some reason. I want to try a apple pie dessert pizza next week. The touch of cinnamon added a nice flavor.

Based on the numbers it looks like is 61.5% of liquid but I also don't know how much hydratation the butter and sugar adds to the dough I would use more water simply because I like high hydratation doughs.

Based on the numbers it looks like is 61.5% of liquid but I also don't know how much hydratation the butter and sugar adds to the dough I would use more water simply because I like high hydratation doughs.

RamirOk,

Thanks so much for converting Novemberís number to baker percents. I donít know if I used 2% evaporated milk, it was just called evaporated milk. I didnít think the dough felt like 61.9% hydration. I donít know what kind of AP and Bread flour November used, but I used Better for Bread and KAAP.

Glad to hear you also like high hydration doughs. Good luck if you try out Novemberís recipe!

A good place to do the kind of analysis that is necessary to determine the "effective" hydration of November's dough is the Nutritiondata.self.com website at http://nutritiondata.self.com/. If you look at the Nutrition Facts for evaporated milk (I did not see a 2% version), cider vinegar, brown sugar (light or brown) and unsalted butter, and do some simple calculations, you will see that the above ingredients have the following percents of water:

Applying those percents to the amounts of those ingredients in November's dough formulation, I get a water contribution from those ingredients of 75.462 grams. Adding that amount to 84 grams of water, and dividing that quantity by 288 grams (144 grams + 144 grams), the "effective" hydration is about 55.4%. The dough might feel a bit wetter if we take into account the effects of the fats in the unsalted butter and the fat content of the evaporated milk.

I will leave to you how best to increase the total effective hydration if a higher value is desired.

A good place to do the kind of analysis that is necessary to determine the "effective" hydration of November's dough is the Nutritiondata.self.com website at http://nutritiondata.self.com/. If you look at the Nutrition Facts for evaporated milk (I did not see a 2% version), cider vinegar, brown sugar (light or brown) and unsalted butter, and do some simple calculations, you will see that the above ingredients have the following percents of water:

Applying those percents to the amounts of those ingredients in November's dough formulation, I get a water contribution from those ingredients of 75.462 grams. Adding that amount to 84 grams of water, and dividing that quantity by 288 grams (144 grams + 144 grams), the "effective" hydration is about 55.4%. The dough might feel a bit wetter if we take into account the effects of the fats in the unsalted butter and the fat content of the evaporated milk.

I will leave to you how best to increase the total effective hydration if a higher value is desired.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for the link and also figuring out the hydration of Novemberís dough formulation. I was aware of the Nutritiondata.self.com website from you figuring out different dough formulations, but was never good at figuring out how to do the calculations how to apply water content to then being able to figure out hydration.

I am not sure how much I am going to up the water in Novemberís formulation if I try the Carnation 2% evaporated milk product or try the Shurfine evaporated milk product, but will post next week on what I did.

I mixed another attempt at Novemberís dessert dough this morning and changed the water to 110 grams. I also substituted MFB shortening for the unsalted butter, because I wanted to see how the MFB shortening works in a dough. The rest of the ingredients stayed the same. The dough came together well and felt nice. The dessert dough wasnít dry like the last time.

I made a ďDutch Apple Pie PizzaĒ with this attempt with Novemberís dough formulation that I upped the hydration and also used MBF shortening. This attempt was better than my last attempt, in oven spring and also taste in the crust.

I used sweet snitz apples and prepared them Monday evening by boiling them with water, added a little bit of cinnamon and a little bit of sugar. When the apple mixture had cooled I added a couple of squeezes of lemon juice to give a little tarter taste. I also prepared the streusel Monday evening by combining 1 cup Ultragrain flour, 1 cup light brown sugar and Ĺ cup of butter. That was also refrigerated until Tuesday. The icing was prepared using Peterís directions of using 1 cup powdered sugar, 3 ĺ teaspoons warm water, 1 teaspoon of Karo syrup, 3/8 teaspoons of real vanilla and a dash of salt and refrigerated.

This dough ball opened easily and didnĎt feel dry. The apple snitz mixture was applied on the skin, then the streusel. The pizza was then baked, cooled, then the icing was applied with my one squeeze bottle with a tip. The resulting taste of the ďDutch Apple Pie PizzaĒ was really good. My taste testers had a few slices and really enjoyed it. Steve also took home a slice for his wife and she really liked it too. I saved two slices for today. One is for my mom and one is for me. I really like dessert pizzas.